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Our work has an impact on the lives of many people.

Every UCB employee is committed to follow the strict regulatory standards for research, development, manufacturing and distribution of our products to ensure we meet all safety, quality, regulatory, legal and environmental requirements.

Environment

All our activities have an impact on the environment. At UCB, we take our responsibility to the planet very seriously.

We commit to reducing our ecological footprint with the thinking that it does not make sense to provide our patients with solutions for their diseases, on the one hand, while on the other, destroying the environment they live in.

For the past 10 years, we have made progress in this direction by improving our buildings and processes, raising awareness and encouraging greener behaviors.

UCB set ambitious targets to be reached by 2030:

Become carbon neutral :

reducing the emissions by 35%

compensating those we cannot reduce

CO2 emission (tons)

2015

112415

2016

94002

2017

86965

2018

78328

Compared to our baseline-year 2015, overall scope 1 and scope 2 CO2 emissions were reduced by 49%. This reduction is mainly due to:

divestiture of the sites in Seymour (U.S.) and Shannon (Ireland) in 2015 and 2016,

revamping projects completed at several manufacturing plants and

the fact that 92% of consumed electricity is generated from renewable sources.

Business travel, associated with scope 3 CO2 emissions resulted in 45 009 tons, a decrease of 4% when compared to 2015.

Reduce water consumption by 20%

Water (m3)

2015

804360

2016

704310

2017

663359

2018

799469

Compared to 2015, water consumption decreased by 1%. This evolution was mainly impacted by:

the divestiture of the sites in Seymour (U.S.) and Shannon (Ireland)

water saving projects

the grown importance of water-intense bioprocesses at our production plant in Bulle (Switzerland) and

increased usage of surface water for cooling purpose at our site in Monheim (Germany).

Reduce waste generation by 25%

Waste (tons)

Waste recovered (tons)

2015

9746

9226

2016

8712

8486

2017

7090

6484

2018

6970

6435

In 2018, waste generated at the UCB facilities has decreased by 28% compared to the baseline.

UCB globally managed to recover 92% of its waste, predominantly through recovery of waste as a fuel to generate energy, and the recovery and regeneration of solvents, which is slightly lower than the recovery rate of 94% achieved in baseline year 2015.

Our Green Strategy currently focuses on the activities we can directly control and sets clear, absolute milestones to measure our progress. Conﬁrming our commitment to meeting the COP21 ambition, UCB joined the Science Based Target Initiative to ﬁght climate change.

Beyond the scope change, factors which influenced consumption are:

increased production and research activities;

variations in climatological conditions (with an impact on the need for cooling/heating);

The scope covered has evolved from 86% in 2015 (benchmark year) to 90% in 2018.read more

Environment data are consolidated for all manufacturing, research and development sites, HQ, and affiliates from Brazil, China, India, Italy, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Russia, and U.S.

Scope changes:

2015: Divestiture of the Kremers Urban operation including production site in Seymour, IN (U.S.). Startup of the bioplant in Bulle (Switzerland)

2016: Divestiture of the production site in Shannon (Ireland)

2017: Acquisition of Berryllium in Boston, MA (U.S.)

The footprint of Beryllium in Boston, MA (U.S.), acquired in 2017 and employing 50 employees, and Element Genomics in Durham, NC (U.S.), acquired in 2018 and employing 15 employees, is not yet included in the report.

Social

Our ability to make a signiﬁcant difference to the lives of people living with severe diseasesdepends on the talent and commitment of our people.

Each team member brings expertise in a speciﬁc aspect of drug development such as manufacturing, commercialization, safety, quality, regulatory affairs or medical compliance.

Patients

Patients

At the core of UCB’s mission is the improvement of the life of people living with severe chronic diseases, including enhanced access to existing treatments, a tailored design, and clinical development of new molecules and solutions for patients.

In 2018, our 5 main medicines, Cimzia®, Vimpat®, Briviact®, Keppra® and Neupro® helped more than 3 340 000 patients and their families living with severe immunological or neurological disorders. This is an increase of over 13% compared to last year.

New patient support programs are launched or expanded. These include sponsorship programmes, informative websites, mentoring projects and scholarships, all of which work towards improving the quality of life for those affected by severe diseases.

UCBCares® is a service dedicated to patients and healthcare professionals, managed by a team of knowledgeable and experienced professionals. Our specific aim is to provide simple access to help and information about your treatment, helping to answer any concerns and other treatment-related enquiries.

Employees

Essential to our success are the engagement, expertise, persistence and compliance of our colleagues. We believe every one of us can have an impact, wherever in the world, whatever our role.

7 495 employees started every day with one simple question:

"how can this create value for people living with severe diseases?"

UCB is determined to accelerate diversity and inclusion, anchoring it in our company culture.

Ensuring a diverse and inclusive environment at UCB is important for our patient value culture. Given the span of our activities and our global footprint, diversity is a given at UCB. Mentioning diversity immediately triggers the gender topic. However, diversity is much more than gender, race or age (innate characteristics); it is about education, beliefs and experience (acquired characteristics).

Collaborating with colleagues from different horizons is a gift and also has its challenges: working easily across nations, cultures and education sometimes is not a given. In 2018, we continued to raise awareness around conscious and unconscious bias by organizing several initiatives in multiple sites.

Governance

Conducting business ethically and responsibly is fundamental to UCB’s core values. We have a strong culture of integrity, with policies and procedures in place to ensure the highest ethical standards are applied throughout the company’s value-chain.

Code of Conduct

UCB code of conduct provides a framework which helps us navigate through the challenging and evolving business and legal environments.

The code of conduct, available in 14 languages, outlines general principles of business conduct and ethics that help guide every UCB colleague and UCB’s partners throughout the world when making decisions. It includes various topics, such as, conflict of interest, confidentiality, compliance, anti-bribery and anti-corruption, respectfulness, human rights and child labor policies, among others.

Relations with public authorities

UCB does not contribute to political candidates. In the U.S, UCB, Inc. has a voluntary political action committee (UCB Political Action Committee) which makes contributions to candidates and candidate committees; all contributions can be found in publicly available Federal Election Commission filings.

Relations with healthcare professionals

We aspire to maintain high standards of ethics and integrity in our interactions. We strongly believe that ensuring transparency in our financial relationships with healthcare professionals is essential to increase patients’ trust. Patients need to know that they can trust their doctors to recommend, prescribe and administer appropriate care and treatments based solely on clinical evidence and experience.

Relations with patients

In addition to UCB’s own guidelines on patient group engagement and STAR (shared ambition, transparency, accountability, respect) principles, UCB follows the guidelines for interactions with patient organizations established by: